


let loose (from the noose)

by r_astra



Series: back in black [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Imprisonment, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-11-01 03:39:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17859545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/r_astra/pseuds/r_astra
Summary: There are hundreds of notches on Steve’s wall and he doesn’t know where they came from, but he makes a new one every time he wakes up anyway.





	let loose (from the noose)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from AC/DC's _Back in Black_. This one probably makes more sense if you read _forget the hearse _first, since Steve's not exactly a reliable narrator, and the actual events are a whole lot clearer from Clint's POV.__

The Valkyrie hits the ice with an almighty crash, and Steve’s world goes black.

When his surroundings fade back in, there’s cold water leeching the heat from his half-submerged body.

Later, he’ll admit: _I didn’t even look for a way out._

But now, he doesn’t think at all.

He just pulls his shield over his body and closes his eyes.

It’s done.

But it’s not done, because drowning is an awfully slow way to die when you’re the perfect not-quite-human specimen.

Steve’s lungs gasp and shudder and burn and all he can think is: _but I don’t have asthma anymore._

Then his lungs still, frozen solid and he thinks: _it’s done, now it’s done._

God is laughing at him.

He dreams of the cold, of the train, of the snow. Sometimes, rarely, he dreams of cold nights in Brooklyn, Bucky curled around him in his bed, trying desperately to keep Steve’s thin frame from freezing to death.

Sometimes he dreams dreams that he doesn’t think are dreams at all: dreams where his lungs sit leaden in his chest and his heart refuses to beat. There is nothing, no one. No time, no place, just Steve and the cold that has invaded his body, laid waste to his mind.

And then, he wakes up.

 

He is shivering and spasming and there are rough hands pinning him down against cold metal. He lashes out, feels his fist hit soft flesh. Someone is yelling but the words slip through Steve’s mind like oil in water and he doesn’t know what hits him when they fill his veins with sedative.

The next time he wakes, he’s in a cell, wearing nothing but his uniform pants.

He tears through the bars like wet paper and barrels through the halls, looking for an exit and finding a stab of electricity instead, but not before he breaks the necks of a half-dozen men who get in his way.

The remaining guards pile on top of him when he drops, grinding his face into the concrete floor. There’s a gun jammed against the back of his skull.

Steve lets them bind his hands and feet. The world goes black when they shove a needle in his arm.

He wakes up in a different cell, nauseous and bone-tired. He works the metal of the bindings on his wrists savagely until is snaps, blood staining his skin. 

He steps towards the bars immediately, then hesitates.

Peggy pops into his head and he thinks, all of a sudden, that she would think he was being awfully fucking stupid, just running headfirst into trouble. 

So he props himself into the back corner of the cell, watches the hall, and thinks.

When he gets restless, he carves a line into one of the cell walls with the broken handcuffs.

 

The first time they take him to the chair, they don’t do anything at all. They just order him to sit, and make a note in their books when he spits in their faces. They keep asking for hours.

But many a man has called Steve a stubborn motherfucker in the past, and many will in the future.

Finally, they take him back to his cell. He carves another notch into the wall.

 

There are six notches when he breaks out again. The bars on his new cell are hard to break, but he manages it in the end.

He turns away from the way to the chair, then hesitates.

Someone is screaming down the hall.

He heads towards the chair.

As soon as he steps through the doorway, he’s down, the prongs of the electricity weapon digging into his back.

He’s breathless with pain, sprawled on the ground, when they say: _don’t let him see this, he can’t—_

Steve looks up.

There’s a man in the chair.

He’s dressed only in black pants and boots.

He has a metal arm.

His hair is long and dark, plastered to his face with sweat.

He’s—he’s—

 _Bucky?_ Steve breathes, and they hit him again with the electricity.

 

He wakes up in his cell and marks the wall.

He stops planning an escape and starts planning a rescue.

 

He gets out again not long after and heads towards the chair, checking all the rooms that he passes as he goes by, killing anyone who sees him.

He finds the man (Bucky?) in a locked room, sitting straight upright and staring at the wall.

 _Bucky?_ he says.

And the man looks at him and says: _Who the hell is Bucky?_

And Steve knows.

Even in this place, where he doesn’t know anything at all, he knows Bucky’s voice.

Bucky turns on him the moment they run into the guards, but Steve likes to think he would’ve followed him all the way out if they hadn’t seen anyone else.

 

The next time, they almost make it out. Bucky steals a knife from one of the guards and uses it like a professional.

Steve just kills with his bare hands.

An officer shows up and snaps: _Soldat!_ and Bucky stops dead in his tracks.

When they drag Steve to the ground, Bucky keens like a hound, cuts off abruptly when the officer snaps again in Russian.

Bucky screams for hours and Steve breaks his hand against the cell wall, guards watching his every move.

 

The next day, they bring Steve to the chair and strap him into it.

Afterwards, he lies on the floor of his cell and shakes so hard he nearly bites through his lip. Blood flows down his chin. 

He listens to Bucky scream again, and when he stops, they drag Steve in to take his turn.

 

Bucky—Bucky is—

 _THIS IS IMPORTANT_ a voice inside of him screams. _YOU CAN’T FORGET_

 _But I’ve already forgotten,_ Steve thinks (says?) and the guard’s boot lands against his ribs.

“Shut up,” he says in Russian and Steve understands him, thinks: _why when how_.

He wonders how long he’s been here.

He wonders how long Bucky’s been here.

He tries to remember why it’s important.

 

A guard lowers his gun and without thinking, Steve is on him. He takes four more down in as many seconds, at least two of which die instantly.

His feet carry him down a path he knows he should remember, stolen gun in his hand.

But Bucky’s not in the room.

Instead, there’s a familiar looking box, like an upright coffin, that fills Steve with curdling dread.

Steve shoots the cowering, white-coated man in the corner in the leg to stop him running and draws closer, feeling nauseous, feeling—feeling—feeling—

“I can open it,” the man sobs. “Please, please, just let me go. I’ll open it.”

The man must see something like acknowledgement in Steve’s flat stare, because he moves to a control panel and starts flipping switches while Steve watches like a particularly large and violent hawk.

The box opens with a hiss and a cloud of fog and Bucky falls out. Steve is so focused on the dark-haired man, he doesn’t notice the needle until it’s jabbed into his neck.

He swats the white-coated man down as easily as he would an insect and shoots him twice in the head for good measure, already swaying.

“Bucky,” he manages as the guards flood the room.

And Bucky says: “…Steve?” His voice is hoarse and confused and the last thing Steve sees is the guards shoving him into the ground face-first, slapping thick restraints onto his arms.

 

There are hundreds of notches on Steve’s wall and he doesn’t know where they came from, but he makes a new one every time he wakes up anyway.

There’s another name in his head, and it’s important. Sometimes he remembers it, sometimes he doesn’t.

Sometimes, words rush through his head like stampeding cattle, phrases tumbling over each other like pebbles in a stream.

Gotta stop HYDRA.

Schmidt is dead.

Bucky.

Bucky.

Bucky.

How far behind the lines?

Sometimes he thinks: why aren’t they German?

Sometimes he hears Russian and rejoices, not knowing why, _redarmyredarmyredarmy_ running through his mind.

Sometimes he hears English and doesn’t understand, thinks: _why?_ Thinks: _what did I do?_

The bars on his cell hurt when he touches them, make him seize and shake on the floor even more than he already does. He doesn’t think they used to do that.

He dreams in brilliant color, a blue coat, a red skull, green trees, red lips, all against white white white white white.

In his dreams, a woman says _ready for our dance?_ and he knows her name, he knows he does, he just can’t _remember it._ A man covered in engine grease with a perfectly groomed mustache says: _wouldn’t’ve given you all my vibranium if I knew you were gonna lose it, Cap._

A dark haired man falls from a train, laughs in a bar, stares into a campfire, collapses out of a box and says _…Steve?_ his face creased with confusion, with pain.

 

He hears the man come into the cell, hears him ask about the notches, ask for Steve’s name.

It takes him a moment to realize the man wants an answer, another for Steve to think out the sound of his own name, to remember the way it felt in his mouth.

“Steve,” he says, finally.

The man says: “What?”

Steve tries again, wonders if he got it wrong: “My name is Steve,” he says carefully.

“Hi Steve,” the man answers. “I’m Clint.”

 

Clint being there is odd. Steve has been alone as long as he can remember (which, really, does not mean that he’s been alone very long, he doesn’t remember much.)

Clint asks questions that Steve doesn’t want to think about.

Clint asks _how long have you been here?_ , asks _what the hell are they doing to you?_

Steve doesn’t know what to answer so he doesn’t answer at all.

But somehow, he thinks he’s remembering more than he used to.

 

A man is leaning over him when he wakes up.

 

A man is in his cell when he wakes up.

 

A man is eyeing him from the back wall of the cell when he wakes up, and for some unknown reason, he trusts him.

 

He doesn’t hurt people he trusts. He knows it means the chair. He knows.

He doesn’t touch the man anyway.

 

The man (“Clint, Steve, I’m _Clint._ ) starts saying the words in his head and he (Steve? Steve.) doesn’t understand. Clint says: HYDRA. He says: Schmidt is dead.

Understanding is hard. Thinking is hard. Steve sleeps instead.

Some part of him recognizes that the pattern has changed. The sessions in the lab are different, he’s strapped to the chair less often, beaten more, talked at more. He’s got more time in the cell than he used to.

He’s sleeping more and he feels…clearer. Like there’s structures emerging in the fog of his brain.

 

He wakes up one morning feeling wrong. His hands are too big, his arms too muscled. The man in his cell-- _Clint_ is saying things that Steve—things that Steve knows he knew once. He knows—he thinks—he remembers—

It’s all too much, rushing through his brain and leaving him reeling. He—he—he—

Bucky is here.

Bucky is here and they are _hurting him._

The bars don’t come down without a fight, but Steve thinks there was a time where he liked a fight. Maybe that time is now.

He follows a path he should have forgotten, ignoring Clint’s protests, and only hesitates a moment before recalling the pattern of switches and buttons needed to open the box.

He swings Bucky’s limp and shaky form over his shoulders, whispering: “I got you, Buck. We’re getting outta here.”

Clint says: “That’s the _Winter Soldier._ ”

Steve thinks: _what kind of name is the Winter Soldier?_

Steve says: “His name is Bucky.”

Clint is protesting, but Steve doesn’t much care. Bucky over his shoulder and freedom within reach and he’s _remembering_ for the first time in—God, how long has he been here?

Steve thinks _Peggy’s gonna kill me_ , thinks _I hope the boys are all okay_.

Faces flash through his mind as they bust through the halls, seeking open air.

Steve is drunk on memory, high on the feeling of a gun in his hand and a friend at his side.

And then they hit the ambush and Steve doesn’t think anything at all except: _survive survive survive_.

Bucky appears like a vengeful angel at his side, expression dark and hair matted with blood. They fall into rhythm just like they did in Brooklyn’s back alleys, in fields in France, in Austrian mountains.

Clint’s bullets carve openings for them, create weaknesses to exploit, provide cover. When his friends show up, the tide turns.

It’s all over in what could’ve been minutes or hours, or maybe years. Steve knows his grasp on time is a little off these days.

But everything is right, now. Everything is right. He’s free. Bucky’s _alive_. They’re back with the SSR.

 

When they tell him what year it is, he drops like a puppet with his strings cut.

Bucky doesn’t.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know how you liked Steve's POV! I'm trying to get around to responding to the comments on _forget the hearse_ , but I'm really busy at the mo, so it might take me a while. I'll get to them, though!
> 
> I'm working on another Clint POV work set after the events of this one and _forget the hearse_ , hopefully that will be done and up soon.


End file.
